Learning in the Open: What AI Is (and Isn’t) Changing

We’ve heard the questions about AI tutors—about what they can do, and what they can’t. Educators are right to ask these questions.

Early use of Khan Academy’s AI tutor, Khanmigo, has varied. Some chats help students move forward more than others. Those patterns are exactly what we’ve been studying as we test, learn, and improve the experience alongside teachers and school districts.

One thing hasn’t changed: the learning that happens through practice.

We’ve seen that consistently over many years. Across multiple studies, students who spend time practicing on Khan Academy make meaningful gains. That foundation matters more than any single feature, including AI.

Khanmigo’s role is to help when students get stuck, feel unsure, or want to understand why something works. It’s not a replacement for teachers or for practice. It’s one more way to help students keep going.

This school year, we’re seeing an average of 269,000 interactions with Khanmigo on weekdays. Since launch in 2023, there have been over 108 million interactions overall. We see students reasoning through problems and deepening their understanding, but only around 15% of students who have access to Khanmigo engage with it. So we know we have more work to do. For example, we’re studying whether students can solve the next problem on their own—we call this “next-item correctness.” It is a direct measure of independent learning transfer, not just performance with AI assistance, and we see promising early findings.

We’ve been reworking the experience based on what we’ve seen in classrooms and feedback from educators and students. We’re piloting the following improvements with select districts: 

• Khanmigo now guides students through assignments and is more visible while they’re working on problems.
• Instead of waiting for students to ask the perfect question, it offers help in the moment they need it. 
• Using research on help-seeking, we’ve differentiated how Khanmigo supports students before and after they attempt a problem.
• It adapts based on whether a student is learning a skill for the first time or reviewing it.
• We’ve made the overall experience simpler and more intuitive.
• We’re providing Khanmigo with information about a students’ mastery of a skill and its prerequisites and prompting Khanmigo to offer a review of pre-requisite skills when needed.

Some of these changes are already working well. Others still need improvement. We’re continuing to refine the experience in partnership with the educators and students using Khan Academy every day. Importantly, we strive to be transparent about what is working and what is not. 

This is what building education technology for classrooms actually looks like: learning in the open, improving with real use, and staying grounded in what helps students learn.

You’ll see more of this experience in classrooms as we roll out this reimagined experience to all of our Khan Academy district partners in the summer of 2026. 

On April 22, Sal Khan will walk through the new experience and share what we’re seeing so far. You can join the free webinar.

Register now

Teachers who want early access can sign up to be the first to know when it’s available.

As a nonprofit, our goal is simple: understand what works, improve what doesn’t, and make effective learning available to more students. We’ll keep at it.